That’s Eugene’s (Jack Rowan) line. He’s done working for his Dad (Nigel O ‘Neill), the meanest bastard ever to run a construction crew. Eugene’s happy to waste his youth drinking with his mates in The Stoker and ushering naive tourists to that pile of stones they come out to see – not that there’s really a vampire under there. Certainly not the one, true vampire that inspired Bram Stoker in the first place.
Right! So, many pints and backhoes and buddies later we find
out whether ol’ Abhartach under those stones is a myth or not.
As writer/director Chris Baugh adapts his 2013 short into a fun, effective monster flick, he begins by tossing out vampire tradition. Ireland’s own Bram Stoker had written a piece of fiction, after all, and this is reality. The new mythology is a little muddier and more monstrous than Dracula, but never less than fun.
Baugh taps into the same kind of smalltown boredom that situates
the nation’s most memorable monster movies, from Grabbers to Rawhead
Rex. He does a lot with a small budget, suggesting the monster more than showing
it until the final act, but there’s plenty of blood to make up for the
subtlety.
A couple of veterans (O’Neill, as well as John Lynch, also
on Shudder right now in Christopher Smith’s The
Banishing) give the cast a strong backbone. A solid group of young ne’er
do wells (Louise Harland, Michael Hough and Fra Fee joining Rowan) create a lived-in
camaraderie. The charm and familiarity among the ensemble are undoubtedly the
reasons the film works as well as it does.
Boys from County Hell is a horror/comedy, but it’s rarely laugh-out-loud funny. It’s actually a good deal more tender in its own endearingly bull-headed way, with a narrative more focused on the father/son dynamic than on coming of age or bloodshed. Baugh’s deep sense of these characters and this terrain benefit the relationship building and give the film a nice throughline.
This is a “what are you going to do with your life” film, and for some people, it takes a good, old-fashioned bloodletting to help them make up their minds.
With this episode we hit the big 200, so we wanted to celebrate in the most masochistic way possible. No! We wanted a really great topic (George’s choice) and a really great guest – filmmaker and co-founder/programmer of Nightmares Film Festival, Jason Tostevin.
Together we talk through the very best horror movies we could not watch a second time no matter what.
5. A Serbian Film (2010)
This is not a movie we would recommend to basically anyone. That’s not to say it’s a bad film – it’s pretty well directed, acted, and written. It’s just that the co-writer/director Srdjan Spasojevic is trying to articulate the soul-deadening effects of surviving the depravity of war. The film title is no coincidence – the film is meant to reflect the reality of a nation so recently involved in among the most depraved, horrific, unimaginable acts of war. It’s as if he’s saying, after all that, what could still shock us?
Like Pier Paolo Pasolini’s notorious 1975 effort Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom – also a depiction of the depravity left behind after war – A Serbian Film overwhelms you with horrifying imagery.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddwrbcMmzlc
4. An American Crime (2007)
In 1966, Gertrude Baniszewski, along with three of her children and two neighbor boys, was convicted of what’s commonly considered to be the most heinous crime ever committed in the state of Indiana. The senior investigator described the prolonged abuse and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens as the most sadistic case he’d investigated in his 35 years on the force.
In 2007, two films were released depicting the horror. The Jack Ketchum-penned The Girl Next Door found a larger audience, but co-writer/director Tommy O’Haver’s An American Crime is the far superior film.
Elliot Page offers a full, layered performance, making Sylvia a realistic character – someone you might have known in high school. Of course, that makes it even harder to stomach what becomes of her. The entire cast—an impressive ensemble—does stunning work, but the dark magic here is Catherine Keener. Giving one of the best performances of her already stellar career, Keener guarantees that it will be a long time before you recover from this movie.
3. The Painted Bird (2019)
If you paint the wings of a sparrow (or stitch a star to his jacket) the rest of the flock will no longer recognize him. The other birds will swarm and peck him until he plummets back to the earth. This is just one of the horrific lessons a young boy learns as he desperately searches for anywhere or anyone safe in war-torn Eastern Europe.
What follows is a brutal parade of the worst humanity has to offer. Domestic abuse, graphic violence, multiple instances of animal abuse and death, rape, child abuse and rape, and more. Then the war crimes start around hour three.
The Painted Bird is a test of endurance. It’s also a beautifully shot, well-performed, and incredibly moving piece of cinema. You simply have to be willing to go where it wants to take you. And all of those places are dark and darker.
2. Irreversible (2002)
French filmmaker/provocateur Gaspar Noe does not play well with his audience. Every film, no matter how brilliantly put together or gloriously filmed, is a feat in masochism to watch. Later efforts, like Enter the Void, spread the misery out for its full running time, but for Irreversible, he gave it to us in two horrifying scenes. While the head-bashing is tough viewing, the film centers on a rape scene that is all but impossible to watch.
Noe’s general MO is to punish you through sheer duration. The scenes last so long you feel like you cannot endure another minute, and this scene certainly does that. Not shot even momentarily for titillation, and boasting a devastatingly excellent performance from Monica Bellucci, it justifies its own horrific presence. There are other films with necessary and difficult rape scenes – Straw Dogs, I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on the Left, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer – but none is harder to stomach than this.
1. Nothing Bad Can Happen (2013)
This film is tough to watch, and the fact that it is based on a true story only makes the feat of endurance that much harder. But writer-director Katrin Gebbe mines this horrific tale for a peculiar point of view that suits it brilliantly and ensures that it is never simply a gratuitous wallowing in someone else’s suffering.
Tore (Julius Feldmeier) is an awkward teen in Germany. His best friend is Jesus. He means it. In fact, he’s so genuine and pure that when he lays his hands on stranded motorist Benno’s (Sascha Alexander Gersak) car, the engine starts.
Thus begins a relationship that devolves into a sociological exploration of button-pushing evil and submission to your own beliefs. Feldmeier is wondrous—so tender and vulnerable you will ache for him. Gersak is his equal in a role of burgeoning cruelty. The whole film has a, “you’re making me do this,” mentality that is hard to shake. It examines one particular nature of evil and does it so authentically as to leave you truly shaken.
Filmmaker Christopher Smith has repeatedly proven a knack
for horror.
Whether he locks us up in the tunnels beneath London with
Franka Potente (2004’s Creep), transports us to the Dark Ages with Sean
Bean and Eddie Redmayne (2010’s Black Death), or forces us on a weekend
corporate team building of death (the sublime 2006 horror comedy Severance),
Smith takes an audience somewhere we probably shouldn’t go.
The Banishing drops us in rural England, just days before WWII. Marianne (Jessica Brown Findlay, Downton Abbey) and her young daughter arrive at a beautiful-if-creepy estate where Marianne’s husband Linus (John Heffernan) has just been appointed Vicar.
Naturally, the house is haunted. The Church says one thing, but this odd redhead from town (Sean Harris, the picture of subdued weirdness) whispers another.
The Banishing is really the first Smith film to walk
such familiar ground. His screenplay, co-written with David Beton and Ray
Bogdanovich, takes inspiration from England’s infamous Borley Rectory—allegedly
the nation’s most haunted house.
The direction that inspiration leads is rarely in question.
Smith trots out a lot of familiar ideas, though he does package them well. Some
incredibly creepy images accompany Marianne’s deepest fears, and Smith puts
horror’s beloved old mirror prop to exceedingly spooky use.
Performances are solid as well. Findlay, in particular, finds
depth and genuineness in the frequently portrayed role of the woman to be
deemed insane in lieu of dealing with the supernatural.
Smith sometimes crosses over effectively into the inner
working of the mind, and these scenes feel freshest and most engaging. They are
overwhelmed, unfortunately, with stale plot devices.
The result feels very un-Christopher Smith-like (if there is such a thing). He’s been a tough filmmaker to pinpoint because each of his movies varies so wildly from the last. The Banishing looks and feels unlike anything else he’s done. Too bad it feels so much like what everyone else has.
If you have ever wondered what Lord of the Flies
might look like in space, Neil Burger thinks like you.
The generally mediocre director (The Upside, Limitless,
Divergent, etc.) follows a manned vessel in search of the next planet we
can ruin. Or not. Maybe our better natures will win out.
Voyagers is the journey toward that new home. The
crew doesn’t really know Earth—they were the result of specifically engineered
donors, raised indoors so they wouldn’t miss open spaces, and will spend their
whole adult lives on the ship. Their children will, too. But their
grandchildren will be the first generation to see the new planet.
Naturally, this is only going to work if nothing kills them
and they don’t kill each other before future generations can exist.
Scientist and father figure Richard (Colin Farrell) will
shepherd them through as much of the journey as he can, but the future of the
human race is in the hands of these young people.
Essentially a YA space fantasy, Voyagers is not
without its charms. Tye Sheridan and Fionn Whitehead lead a cast of
convincingly naïve geniuses. The conflict is obvious (especially for those who
read Golding), but Burger zigs and zags enough to keep your interest. The director’s
knack for encapsulated action and his sharp cast’s baser instincts create some
B-movie thrills.
The nature versus nurture argument gets a quick nod, but
Burger (who also wrote) isn’t especially preoccupied with the why. The immediacy
of the fact that it just is requires more attention.
Science fiction tends to be heavily allegorical and heavily borrowed—Voyagers is certainly both of these. Although the execution feels a bit like a neutered version of Claire Denis’s brilliant 2018 cosmic horror High Life, the story itself looks to the distant future to illustrate our present (and very, very recent past).
As her camera races down the mountains of Val-d’Isère, writer/director Charlène Favier depicts both thrill and isolation in equal measure.
It’s a tone that fits more than just the competitive Alpine skiing that sits at the center of her latest film Slalom. The breathless and somewhat terrifying imagery is a perfect characterization of wunderkind skier Lyz Lopez’s (Noée Abita) particular coming of age.
At 15, Lyz is in training but on her own. Her mother has
taken work quite a distance away, so Lyz will be looking after herself on
weekends, training at a facility and studying schoolwork on weekdays.
She’s also quite heartbreakingly looking for somebody who
won’t let her down.
Abita’s performance is equally aching and frustrating, which makes her a painfully realistic adolescent. Faviere wisely limits Lyz’s actual dialog, allowing the performance to become more observational. Lyz watches and processes, her awkwardness, stillness, and anger telling us more than words ever could.
There’s a lived-in feel to this film, likely born of the filmmaker’s experience growing up in Val-d’Isère. The training, the experiences of team and competition, the beautiful but frigid landscape create an organic backdrop to the larger drama, a complex and soberingly authentic exploration of abuse.
The sports movie genre is littered with tales of the could-have-been athlete who regains what legitimacy he can by shepherding the next phenom. Jérémie Renier offers nary a false note as charismatic, tough-as-nails trainer Fred, whose moral weaknesses far outweigh any coaching talent.
Faviere’s take on the situation is even-handed. She never stoops to melodrama, never paints Lyz as a faultless innocent. The character’s complexities, particularly given Abita’s assured performance, only ensure that the film leaves more of a mark.
Though writer/director Tim Sutton’s latest is more a collection
of images and moments than a strictly plotted narrative, the story that unfolds
is kind of a bittersweet wonder.
An isolated youngish man (Cosmo Jarvis) rails against the
impending destruction of his neighborhood, a community he haunts wearing a
happy Halloween mask. An act of kindness at a nearby convenience store, though,
brings about a surprising and really lovely friendship.
Jarvis, who was so good in last year’s Calm
with Horses, convinces again as an outsider with a lot of pent-up anger
but an otherwise sweet heart. There’s a mixture of brutality and vulnerability
in the portrayal that calls to mind Tom Hardy or even Brando – although, given
a particular preoccupation in the film, he may be aiming for James Dean.
Newcomer Dela Meskienyar matches him step for step as another outsider, also angry at circumstances that feel beyond control, also hiding her face. It’s a remarkable and never forced kind of parallelism Sutton develops–a lost quality that he sees in every character. He uses this thread to braid disparate lives together and to create a sense of empathy, even toward the most loathsome among us.
Sutton is no stranger to tales of white male alienation,
bruised masculinity, and an almost childlike struggle with our primal nature.
Both his first feature Dark
Night (which deals with the 2012 Aurora shooting), and his follow up, Donnybook
(about bare knuckle brawls in addiction-riddled Ohio) illustrate his interest.
Funny Face, though, marks a step toward something more
stylish. The film has a retro vibe, like a long-lost Seventies indie set in
Brooklyn. Given the of-the-moment storyline, this offers his film the timeless
quality of a fairy tale—a theme he develops with imagery of equal parts urban realism
and magical whimsy.
A sense of mourning fuels Funny Face. While Sutton’s film is intimately linked to its Brooklyn setting, that exact same mourning informs Lesotho’s beautiful This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection, also releasing this week. Unchecked capitalism is a global cancer, it would seem.
All of Sutton’s films contextualize human struggle within the context of community. This has never been truer than it is with Funny Face, a comment on the way greed destroys history and the sense of place, leaving nothing in that emptiness, even for those who profit.
Here’s a sampling of the things we yelled at the screen during Godzilla vs. Kong:
“Boom! In the face!”
“Kyle Chandler is a terrible father.”
“Skull f**k him!”
“It’s just a flesh wound, get up!”
So you could say we were engaged in this battle, the one that’s been brewing since the end credits stinger from the excellent Kong: Skull Island four years ago. GvK can’t quite match that film’s tonal bullseye, but it easily lands as second best in the “Titan” Monsterverse that was reborn with 2014’s Godzilla.
Picking up three years after the tedious Godzilla: King of the Monsters, the film finds Kong contained on Skull Island under the respectful eye of Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall).
Meanwhile, Godzilla attacks APEX’s Florida headquarters – seemingly unprovoked. Mansplaining Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler) says Godzilla’s changed his hero stripes, but his daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) and “Titan Truth” podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry, committing grand theft scenery) think there’s got to be more to the story.
There’s plenty more, and Dr. Nathan Lind (Alexander Skarsgård) believes Kong could be the key to proving his Hollow Earth theory about the Titans. Ilene agrees to allow the heavily sedated Kong to be transported by sea, but far from Godzilla’s favorite swimming holes, of course.
Riiiight.
Director Adam Wingard (You’re Next, Blair Witch) clearly realizes that monster mashes aren’t compelling if you can’t tell who’s fighting, and the technical aspects of GvK bring the Titan battles to vibrant life. Pristine cinematography, detailed CGI effects and a wonderfully layered sound design elevate the thrills early and often.
And that is what we’re here for, isn’t it?
That’s a familiar refrain when the human arcs in these films are so woeful, but screenwriters Eric Pearson and Max Borenstein toss the overwrought melodrama of King of the Monsters and add a frisky sense of welcome fun.
Yes, there’s another cute kid (Kaylee Hottle) with negligent guardians, and more than enough characters, locations and theories to keep up with. But even if you fall behind, you’ll catch up when these two Titans throw hands and tails, because they mean business.
They’re timing ain’t bad, either, as this is the kind of cinematic spectacle that could mean very good business for newly reopened theaters that badly need it. It’s a PG-13 return to form for a legendary franchise, with plenty to reward your popcorn munching and ringside commentary (keep it clean at the multiplex, please).
Just pick your screen size, and get ready to rumble.
